Abstract
In autism and technology research, technologies are often developed by researchers targeting specific social and communication difficulties experienced by individuals with autism. In some technology-based projects, children and adults with autism as well as parents, carers, teachers, and other professionals, are involved as users, informers, and (more rarely) as co-designers. However, much less is known about the views of the autism community about the needs they identify as areas that could be addressed through innovative technological solutions. This paper describes the ASCmeI.T. project which encourages members of the autism community to download a free app to answer the question: If there was one new technology to help people with autism, what would it be? This project provides a model of e-participation in which people from the autism community are involved from the start so that new developments in digital technologies can be better matched to support the needs of users.
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Acknowledgements
The ASCmeI.T. project is funded via EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account funding at the University of Bath; ESRC Impact Acceleration Account funding at the University of Sussex; and Higher Education Innovation (Enterprise) Funding from the University of Southampton. Many thanks to Bourne Community College, West Sussex, U.K., and to Olivia Barber for their valuable contributions to the project.
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Parsons, S. et al. (2016). What Technology for Autism Needs to be Invented? Idea Generation from the Autism Community via the ASCmeI.T. App. In: Miesenberger, K., Bühler, C., Penaz, P. (eds) Computers Helping People with Special Needs. ICCHP 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9759. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41267-2_49
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